Scaredy cat tt-2

by Mark Billingham

  He stared at the credit cards that carried his name. Not his real name, of course, but the name he'd been known by for more than ten years. His real name belonged to someone he'd last seen in a first-floor flat in Soho, a long time ago. If he was walking along the street now, and heard his old name, heard those two words being shouted at him, he'd know he was being shouted at by someone who didn't know him. Someone he'd been at school with…

  He looked at his watch. Late for a meeting. His mind racing backwards and forwards in time. Remembering, imagining… Moments later, striding briskly away down the corridor, he reached for his wallet a second time. Smiling, he took out the photo again, and looked at the two young faces.

  Fifteen years was a very long time.

  EIGHT

  Date: 16 December

  Target: Fern

  Age: 20-30

  Pickup: Pub, club, wine bar etc.

  Site: TBA

  Method: Firearm (prefer not silenced)

  Sunday. Thorne's first real day off in nearly a fortnight. Lunch with the old man had seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. A distraction, something to wash over him, a time-killer. Now, driving back down the M 1, he really wished he hadn't bothered. Aside from anything, he was starving. Of his parents, it had been his dad who'd done most of the cooking. Once upon a time, he'd enjoyed it, but his enthusiasm for that, along with everything else, had waned at the same rate as his fascination for pointless trivia and old jokes had rocketed. While Thorne had pushed a lump of overcooked chicken and a few pallid, underdone vegetables around his plate, his dad had waffled on at absurd length about everything and fuck all. He'd quizzed him about what he thought the five top-selling soap powders in the country were, and giggled through countless stories about men walking into pubs. In fact, he'd barely drawn breath for the entire time Thorne had been there, except for a few uncomfortable minutes when, in the middle of a story about nothing, his eyes had filled with tears, and he'd calmly got up from the table, walked through into the kitchen and closed the door. Thorne could do nothing but sit there, hating himself for thinking that he'd have been happier at a murder scene. The big Christmas discussion had never really materialised until Thorne was about to leave, and even then, it was just the usual tiresome dance, a frustrating bit of back and forth on the doorstep.

  'So, dad.., are you coming, or what?'

  'What d'you need to know now for? It's not for numbers is it?'

  'It's only a week away and…'

  'Nine days.'

  'I just want to know what's happening.'

  'I don't know.., it might be good to do something different.'

  'Well it's up to you, but…'

  'I might go to Eileen's…'

  'Right. Have you asked her?'

  'Name the last six Prime Ministers…'

  'Dad…'

  'Blair, Major, Thatcher.'

  'Have you asked Eileen?'

  'They're the easy ones. Callaghan…'

  It was starting to get dark so Thorne flicked on the headlights. He let the Mondeo drift slowly across into the inside lane. The drive home was relaxing him, calming him down, and he was in no great hurry. He turned on the radio and tuned it in to Radio 5 Live. The second half of Ipswich versus Leicester City. Hardly a glamour fixture, but the commentary soon engaged him as he pushed on along the all but empty motorway towards north London. Moving: out of the semi countryside and into the unlovely and reassuring urban sprawl of Brent Cross, Swiss Cottage and Camden. Moving: from one old man's life going slowly down the tubes, to thoughts of four young women who would never even have that golden opportunity. Moving, towards the possibility of more…

  Moving, away from an afternoon and towards an evening. They rolled apart from each other and lay there, sweating, exhausted, each of them trying to think of a good thing to say. Something that might help. Eventually, Holland came up with something, but Sophie was already turning over, ready for sleep. The sex had been good, better than good, but then it usually was after an argument. They'd spent the best part of the day fighting, then fucked away the rest of it, trying to pretend the fight had never happened. The row came at them with the slow, graceful horror of a lorry skidding on black ice. With the arse-end of a dull Sunday just around the corner, the boredom had slowly given way to irritation and finally, anger. It was an anger that had been there all the time of course, like a bad smell in a locked room, and, once it escaped, it got everywhere, and into everything. It followed them around the flat, as each of them took turns in chasing the other from room to room, swearing and screaming and pounding on walls. It was still there, all over both of them, two hours later, as they cried and squeezed each other until finally, the kissing began.

  Then mouths devoured each other which, only moments before, had ranted and shouted, wounding with words. Some were used far more than others. Work, job, support, wanker, selfish, bitch, children, choice, Thorne…

  Sophie's breathing quickly settled into a pattern that told Holland she was asleep, but he knew that he wasn't going to follow her quickly. There were far too many thoughts rattling around in his head. He wondered how much damage each of these weekly sessions was doing to them, and if the money they'd spent, the time and trouble they'd taken moving into a new flat, would end up being wasted. He wondered why, considering that "it was usually the other way round, he still fancied Sophie, but didn't much like her any more. Why, if he still fancied Sophie so much, had he spent most of the time they were making love thinking about Sarah McEvoy?

  Jacqui had cooked lunch for seven without a word of thanks. Roast beef and the rest of it, for her husband, her mother and her sister's lot. As ever, by the time she'd finished, she wasn't actually hungry herself. Staring at her face in the dressing-table mirror, changing her mind for the second time about which shade of lipstick to go with, she decided that she'd grab something when she was out. Maybe some of the other girls might fancy a meal afterwards. If she ever bloody well got there…

  It wasn't as if she'd expected any volunteers to help clear up, certainly not any of her own useless lot, but it would have been nice. Her sister, as ever, sat there on her fat behind not raising a finger, so by the time Jacqui had washed up and cleared away the mess her sister's horrible kids had made in the living room, she was really late. It wasn't the first time.

  For heaven's sake, it was only every other Sunday. One night, once a fortnight, when her and a few of the girls could let their hair down and talk about how shit everything was at home, and then get back to it before half past ten. She'd tried to suggest that maybe, every other Sunday, her sister could have everybody round to her place. The idea had not gone down well, and that had pretty much been that…

  Mim stood in her knickers, the iron in one hand, remote in the other, channel-surfing. She stopped briefly when she got to The Antiques Road show. She knew her mother would be watching it, assuming that she wasn't sulking after the row the two of them had just had, or storming around the house taking it out on her poor father. She carried on surfing, setting finally for a documentary about sharks, and went back to ironing her jeans. It had been a row she'd known was coming, ever since term had ended and she hadn't eagerly hopped aboard the first train home. Miriam, how could you choose to stay in that dingy bedsit rather than with your own parents in a comfortable house blah blah blah…?

  She'd tried assuring her mother that she would be home in time for Christmas, but once the tears had started, it had been a lost cause. It wasn't like she didn't want to go home, but quite a few of the people on her course had decided to stay on for a bit and it was a laugh, just dossing about with them, going to the pub every night. She pulled on her jeans and moved hangers back and forth along the clothes rail, looking for a shirt. It was quiz night in the pub and she wanted to get there early, make sure she was on a team with that new bloke in the first year with the nose-stud and the green eyes… Jacqui was ready and waiting on the doorstep by the time her husband had got back from running her mother home. He leaned
across and opened the passenger door as she came hurrying down the path. This was their routine. She pulled the door shut, placed her handbag in her lap and the car moved away, beginning their conversationless, ten minute journey to the tube station.

  Mim turned off the television before the God Squad began in earnest. There was really nothing else to do on a Sunday night than sit in the pub. Fuck, she worked hard enough, why the hell not? She pulled her door shut, jogged down the stairs and stepped out into the cold. She heard the rumble of a diesel engine and looked up to see a bus coming round the corner. Swearing enough to make her mother faint, she started to run.

  Jacqui and Mim lived miles apart. They did not know each other. They would never meet. They would finally come together as two names, the latest pair of names, one above the other in capital letters, on a large square of white, wipe-clean plastic. Two names.

  One of them belonging to a dead woman.

  Hendricks rang while he was feeding the cat, and Thorne quickly realised he hadn't been the only one having a shit Sunday. Mr. Handy In-The-Kitchen, who was actually called Brendan, had turned out to be Mr. Unreliable-In-Every-Other-Way.

  'So where's the next piercing going then, Phil? On second thoughts, don't tell me…'

  Hendricks laughed, but Thorne could hear how upset he was. 'Not in a million years, mate. I don't know… I wasn't clingy, I wasn't stand-offish, I really.., tried this time, Tom, you know?'

  'Don't forget for a second that you're talking to completely the wrong person here, but for what it's worth, maybe you're trying too hard. That might be what you're doing wrong.'

  Hendricks sighed, said nothing for a while, then: 'I know exactly what I'm doing wrong. Cutting up dead bodies, removing brains, and hearts and lungs…'

  Thorne understood straight away. This was a conversation they'd had a couple of times before. 'Right. Another one didn't approve of the career choice?'

  'Never said as much, but it was obvious. It's always difficult, but since the start of this year, it's like telling people I'm a terrorist or a murderer or something…'

  At the start of the year, a scandal about the removal of body parts from dead children had discredited the business of organ harvesting in general and pathologists in particular. The hysteria had died down but damage had been done. Rates of organ donation had dropped dramatically. Transplant numbers were down. Pathologists had trouble making new friends.

  'I tell people what I do, there's like this pause, you know?' Thorne did know, very well. Hendricks had started to ramble a little then, and Thorne could tell that he'd been Smoking. The dope was something they never talked about, but Thorne had often smelled it. He could all but smell it now, as Hendricks's voice on the phone dropped to a whisper. 'I wonder if… what I do, is something that I carry on me. D'you reckon?'

  'Phil…'

  'Not the stink, I know how to get rid of that… I mean, more like a shadow or summat. No… more like, when you're under UV light, like at a club, you know.., same as we use with Luminol… and you can see all the fluff and bits on your clothes, all that twinkly dandruff, glowing.., shining white? Maybe it's like that.., yeah. Little pieces of death starting to show up on me…'

  Thorne cooked himself scrambled eggs, ate them at the tiny kitchen table. He thought about his father. Why, as the silly old bugger spiraled increasingly away into the distance, did Thorne feel so… buttoned up? Maybe he needed to do a bit of dope occasionally. Free up his thinking a little. Jan had smoked the odd joint, sometimes. Never in front of him, but he wouldn't really have cared if she had. It wasn't like he had any major objection to it; there was still far too much time and effort wasted in its criminalisation, but ultimately, it wasn't for him. He could always think of something better to spend his money on. Like beer and wine…

  Suddenly, he could picture Jan and the lecturer she'd been screwing behind his back, skinning up, giggling, incense burning by the side of the bed. He opened a bottle of a different kind of drug and carried it through to the living room.

  Abandoning the fruitless search for distraction on TV, Thorne sat for a while, considering what Hendricks had said. Remembering and thinking ahead. Thinking about bodies stabbed and bodies strangled. Thinking about a pair of cardboard coffins in the cargo hold of a plane bound for Amsterdam…

  Were those who worked with death ever free of it?

  He stood and walked across to the stereo. His fingers ran along the rows of CDs and lingered over a boxed set of Johnny Cash, before moving on. He'd treated himself to it the year before, a set of three CDs, each containing songs on one particular theme. God, Love and Murder. Much as he loved Johnny Cash, there was still one of them Thorne hadn't listened to.

  Later, lying awake in bed, the lights turned out, the radio on, he couldn't get Hendricks's slurred monologue out of his head. It was dope-induced rubbish. It was paranoia, self-pity. It was cliche masquerading as philosophy.

  It compelled him.

  It had been over a year since his last relationship. No sign of another one. Was he too carrying a little of the stuff around with him? A handful of sparkling death, visible to those with an eye for it? He pictured his jacket lying across the back of the kitchen chair in the darkness. He closed his eyes and imagined them, luminescent, caught in a beam of moonlight coming through the kitchen window… A few tiny fragments, glittering at his collar and in the folds of the sleeves. Like malignant diamonds.

  Karen, I didn't do it.

  I wish I could tell you that it was because I refused. Because I stood up and said no to any more of it. I wish I could tell you that I was strong, that I decided not to go through with it.

  The truth is, I tried to go through with it and I failed. Thank God. Thank God, I failed. Perhaps, a big enough part of me wanted to fail, wanted it to go wrong so badly that I made it happen. Perhaps I just chose the wrong girl. Or the right one. I sat in the pub and watched her, wanting to run, wanting to stay, counting each drink she had, listening to her laughing and feeling the thing heavy in my pocket. I sipped water and hummed along with the music and willed it all to be over quickly.

  It was late when she finally left; they were virtually the last to leave the place and it was horribly perfect, Karen. They could have gone in the same direction, all of them heading home together and me needing to look again, to head into town and find a club, but she went her own way and I could do nothing but follow.

  I don't often use bad language, Karen, but when I took out the gun, I was fucking terrified. It hung at the end of my arm like a dead thing and her mouth just opened so wide then, and I stood and watched her mouth and listened to her scream for a while. I don't know how long we stood therefore, but instead of doing it quickly, instead of firing, instead of doing it… the thing I was therefore, I just stared as she ran at me, and I bowed my head as she hit and hit. I backed away and I could see her bending down like she was picking something up. Then she came at me again and it started to really hurt and I know it sounds stupid but I almost laughed, because I suddenly realised that now, the sound of screaming was coming from me. I watched her running off towards the lights and shouting and I wiped away the blood that was running from my head on to my face. I put the gun back into my pocket and I left that place. It has to end now, Karen.

  I wish I was brave enough to come to you, but you already know that I'm not. I think the poison inside me has eaten away every ounce of courage there might ever have been.

  I need to find just a little more.

  ***********

  2000

  One phone call to the loving parents, a few weeks earlier, had been all that was necessary. He wasn't surprised that they hadn't moved. Probably never would. A bit of flannel, the charm turned full on and after a few minutes he had addresses for home and work, phone numbers, everything.

  He stood outside the brasserie and peered in through the window. A fashionable expanse of exposed copper piping and deep leather sofas at the front, with tables tucked away towards the back. He couldn't see
him. He'd watched him come in alone, but perhaps he'd met someone inside and they were eating…

  His own lunch was starting to melt. He pushed the rest of the chocolate into his mouth, stuffed the wrapper into his trouser pocket and stepped through the door. The barman looked up and smiled, but Nicklin shook his head, kept walking slowly towards the back of the room, the tables out of sight around the corner. The fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn't nerves, exactly. He didn't suffer from that particular condition, certainly not in any fearful sense. He never had. For as long as he could remember, he'd done things that he knew few others would have done, or dared to do, not because he was brave, but because he wasn't scared. He knew there was a very important difference.

  What he was feeling now was excitement. The possibility of something new and more intense than anything he'd felt before. And in a way of course, he'd be picking up where he left off a long time ago. Something old and something new…

  He reached the back of the room, glanced to his left and saw him immediately. Sitting at a table with two others – men without chins, in shirt-sleeves, guzzling wine, yapping – expense account wankers. He began walking towards the table.

  When he was ten feet away, Palmer looked up, clocked him and went back to his conversation. Of course, he hadn't recognised him. Nicklin had been almost certain he wouldn't. He would have been more than a little disappointed if he had. No fucking point if it wasn't dramatic.

  He stopped. So did the conversation. He took a final step forward, his thighs flush against the edge of the table, their wine glasses wobbling.

  'Can we help you with something?' One of Palmer's friends, nervous but trying very hard to sound edgy. He ignored him, his eyes only on Palmer, waiting for them to be met. When they were, and the tiny spark of recognition flared up into an inferno, it was a moment equal to anything he'd imagined in the preceding weeks.